Follow up to the June 28 Balance Update Preview

[Nighthawk.2401]

3 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Hey folks - I've been in and out of meetings today, apologies for delay. Here's some responses to questions I've seen repeated a few times:

I'm saying this entire comment as politely and reasonably as I can, I would truly appreciate it being read and considered:

I thank you very much for the follow up, it addresses a lot of what the initial post here did not, and it does so in a way which gives me some hope. Not being able to halt the update the day before it goes out does not surprise me, and is very understandable. I'll just have to wait and see how the next update and ensuing communication do to remedy this situation. You say it'll be a few weeks, which is fair, just don't let that turn into a few months please 🙂 

 

Some people clearly overstepped a line (by a lot) over the weekend, which is very much not something to be tolerated, but much of the rest of the feedback from people who were reasonable adults about it still came in at a heated level for a reason. These are players who, at the end of the day, are being very passionate about something they enjoy because they also wish to see this great game succeed. It just feels bad to see so many classes getting slapped with nerfs, mains from each of those classes are left wondering why it feels like the nerfs are coming from a data-driven perspective, from developers who otherwise don't play (or don't play enough / at a high enough skill level) to fairly judge the nuances of these classes. Community feed back is great, but an important part of balance should be having a good representative/advocate for each class within the company, someone who understands the shortcomings, weaknesses, strengths, and intricacies (and ideally, bugs) which players of that class have to face daily. It feels like nobody at ANet has my class's best intrest in mind, and someone who doesn't know the class - or who plays the class in a very limited way (using one elite spec only, with one playstyle/gamemode in mind)  was making the decisions, and nobody was there to stop them and explain how nerfing one problematic spec through the core traits it uses would effectively be deleting the already-weaker / less-common alternative spec from the game.

 

For transparency, I say this as someone who mains druid in WvW squads, and mains deadeye in solo roaming WvW, and isn't particularly interested in PvE (I did my EoD strikes the other day for the first time, that was enjoyable 😄 but y'know, I'm very much interested in WvW more so). 

 

My comments speak to both of my professions, but also to my fellow Mesmers who are very much barely tolerated in the wvw guild/squad community - and have now had their strongest large-squad utility removed from the game. And to my fellow elementalists, who have never been able to overcome the wall that is cleanse-scrapper keeping them from being viable supports - and the DPS cliff which they are kept at the bottom of time and again because of PvE balance reasons.  

 

All four of these classes are definitively the worst performing options in large-squad/guild WvW content. WvW guilds straight up kick players from some of these classes because of it. And all four are being nerfed in WvW again now, because of PvE or even sPvP balance reasons. Warrior, Guard, Necro, Engi, and Rev have all had places in WvW squads for years now, and while I had hoped that EoD would introduce specs which allow the other four classes to enjoy this beautiful endgame content - it fell short on that. And then I held out hope for the big summer balance patch, and it really is just a kick in the face to see our gamemode forgotten entirely at  this point. 

 

Getting someone informed enough to play devil's advocate against any change in the internal discussions which drive balance changes is a powerful tool which ANet is lacking. I ask kindly that you keep this in mind for when you start assembling a more complete/dedicated balance team.  (And this includes looking at how a change targeted at one gamemode will affect other gamemodes) 

 

And I can say, I'm relieved to see the recognition that a dedicated balance team is sorely needed is finally being admitted. No knocks against the developers who have tried their hardest, but it isn't fair to them, and it certainly isn't fair to the community, to ask people qualified as software engineers and hired and paid full time as such to then be doing the game-design decisions on the side - where it competes for their time with their other duties. Balance team needs more opportunity to play the game with the classes they're making decisions about. 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Nighthawk.2401
Wording - and expanding the quote a little to make it easier to see that I'm responding to the update at the top of this page

[foozlesprite.8051]

Quite frankly the community response to all this has been appalling. People need to calm down and realize this is just a game and devs are real people that deserve a basic level of respect regardless of whether you agree with them or not.

In my mind the balance priority should be to allow many different builds that do similar things so people aren't forced into a small amount of classes and every class has options for different roles based on specs chosen. As someone that chose elementalist as a main at launch because of its lauded flexibility, I'm sick and tired of being forced into a DPS role with unforgiving rotations. I want a flexible class that allows me to respond to the situation and provide support for my team instead of following optimal rotations and team compositions for DPS. When the game launched, elementalist was absolutely fine for that. Now it's all about stacking all buffs all the time and if you can't do that you'd better be top-tier DPS. Where is the fun in that? The tempest change is a good change that can help elementalist provide some of that and fit into teams outside of the DPS role, but we'll have to see if teams will accept them for a support role even with that change.

Another way this could sort-of be balanced is by designing encounters that rely more on interaction with the encounter/mechanics than DPS checks, but that won't do much about the DPS check encounters already in place that encourage people to only use meta classes and team comps. A way to fix that is by closing the gap in DPS between those using optimal rotations/team comps and those not, but I know it's far easier to say that than to do it.

The prescriptive meta focus of the game from HoT onwards has been slowly choking the enjoyment out of it for me, and a large part of that meta focus is due to 10-man content, so the focus on balancing for 10-man content has me concerned. I really don't want to drop the game after 10 years, so I keep holding in there in the hopes that I'll eventually get an ele spec that's fun and provides proactive/reactive support solidly enough that it's accepted into high tier content. Until then I'm playing other classes, when I play group content at all. I just hope my frail optimism can hold in there until that day comes, because my primary belief about games is that they should be fun, and right now, trying to find a class I enjoy in GW2 that will also be accepted into group content is just not.

Edited June 28, 2022 by foozlesprite.8051

[clockworkcuttlefish.3254]

1 minute ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Being a video game fan is continual exposure to gaslighting. Being told over and over from different angles and people that your concerns don't matter, that you are exaggerating what is occurring, that you are acting out, and that you need to behave more. It doesn't matter if you rant or write an academic essay, you will still get dismissed by anyone and everyone, if not laughed at and mocked.

This, literally, and it's been going on since at least 2012. It's exhausting. 

[Hazell.2065]

Death threats are unacceptable but your balance team really need to do better. Crit chance on condi trait line? Only extra crit chance in air attunement? Healmech buff when it's the most oppressive heal alac support in the game? I'm sorry, but your balance team clearly don't know about the class they're balancing. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Hazell.2065

[Foshizle.9802]

14 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Q: There's nothing concrete in this post, what are you doing to fix this?

 

•  I recognize that the way feedback is collected for balance updates is far from ideal. We need to preview updates earlier so we’re never in this situation again, and we need to solve for how we go about getting balance feedback from qualified individuals. Eliminate the unofficial backchannels. I’m going to own finding the right solution for this.
•  

 

Still no recognition of the unprofessional work ethic of (some) members of the balance team, which have probably impacted a lot of patches so far and the class/build diversity, etc.

Even if how you go about collecting feedback is improved, it doesn't matter if said feedback goes through a filter of personal preferences and lack of trust. Not to mention on one end we have players with thousands of hours of high-end gameplay and testing offering advice while some of that resistance came from someone who at this stage was still checking/learning(?) what some skills do through the wiki.
Let's really hope this changes too.

[Alsandar.7420]

I think this is my first time ever posting on these forums.

 

ANET please don't act like Blizzard. 

 

I love WoW. But I quit because of the ATTITUDE of the developers at Blizzard.

 

When the GW2 community, Teapot, MukLuk, Kroof - 

 

They're all saying this is the WOST decision by ANET ever

 

Your entire community disapproves. 

 

You are ANET. You're famous for being awesome. For caring. Admitting when you're wrong. Listening.

 

Please don't turn into Blizzard and FIGHT your own community

 

Be ANET and listen

 

Hugs

[PsiMissing.7903]

At this point, I think you should just delay it even if it throws a wrench into your future updates and delays other stuff.  The majority of your community is unhappy and the patch is a flop. It makes zero sense and for having a dedicated team, makes it look like you guys don't even understand your own game. 

 

It's a tough decision but you should really do it to show the players you are actually listening and caring and not just trying to do damage control with false words.  You're rushing out a patch that is going to ruin so many players fun and just are promising to maybe fix it later?  Why would the players be happy about that.

 

Don't release it - Get feed back and make REAL balance changes and test it out.  Don't let your devs make unprofessional comments about not knowing what they're doing and bashing the community. 

[SamuelW.2685]

This post feels hollow, "We know we messed up, yet we're going through with it anyway" is the summary of it. 

I'm also a bit concerned about them defending the one dev we all know, this dev has said personally bias effects their balancing, and that they were excited to see the salt from the reactions to this patch, I'm not enthusiastic with someone like that balancing this game.

[Boo.2580]

Hello, I'll try to leave something useful here even though it might seem unrelated at first.

 

I just watched " Why KSI can do everything all at once" by Colin and Sameer on Youtube.

Basically, its a video about how he listens to/communicates with his community, and how this is beneficial to both him and his viewers.

In our case, it would translate to how it would benefit you Anet as a company, and us the players - your customers.

 

You can start at the reddit part, or watch from the beginning.

 

Hopefully you(ANET) will watch it and understand that you have a big resource(your community) that you are not leveraging, and the way that you are misusing it(kinda ignore it) will hurt you long term.

[Box of Ants.5609]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

I recognize that the way feedback is collected for balance updates is far from ideal. We need to preview updates earlier so we’re never in this situation again, and we need to solve for how we go about getting balance feedback from qualified individuals. Eliminate the unofficial backchannels. I’m going to own finding the right solution for this.

Emphasis mine - I'm happy about this. I was pretty upset about this when the leaks leaked, and I appreciate that you're going to close the backchannels. I'm also glad that the methods for obtaining feedback will be reconsidered - I hope that the new process will be more transparent than the last.

Thanks for the additional update. It provides a lot of clarity.

Edit: Whoever is "confused" by these statements... would you genuinely prefer if ANet continued to patch GW2 based on the feedback of eight streamers in a secret Discord server, and ignored all other input? Because I've got some news for you - those ongoing practices are a big part of the reason why this patch is as bad as it is, and the devs could very easily decide to keep doing things in this manner if they so chose.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Box of Ants.5609
Reason: Evidently some of you morons are too stupid to understand my sentiments and require additional clarification.

[vrauns.3215]

It's the other way around, stop letting the "so called top players" tell you what to do with a balance patch, ive seen this in a lot of games, the devs in those games let top players tell them what direction to go with development  and it destroyed the whole community, people read this preview and are upset, no one has tried the changes, i'm not one of those dramatic players who reads something and it says its all doom and gloom without trying it, it's on the community to do the same.

Edited June 28, 2022 by jonathanjp.6974

[pallas.8150]

7 minutes ago, SamuelW.2685 said:

I'm also a bit concerned about them defending the one dev we all know, this dev has said personally bias effects their balancing, and that they were excited to see the salt from the reactions to this patch, I'm not enthusiastic with someone like that balancing this game.

This.

The amount of profession bias in this game is outright appalling. The fact that it's now PROVEN that the dev team play favorites and being casually ignored by Josh honestly blows my mind. I mean, we joked it happened (FB, WB, Harbinger, Mech)... but there are literal pages of documentation that now support this.

If the game is designed for 'everyone to have fun', then it should do just that. So ensuring that all classes are equally 'fun' and balanced should be a priority.

I don't expect to financially swing for playing this game a while. From what I can see, if the team doesn't care about the players, why should I care about offsetting their salaries?

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by pallas.8150

[Bogdanski.4697]

Hello Josh.

I'm gonna have to be blunt with you, and my feelings are shared with thousands other players.

As a warrior main, and a veteran raider and fractaler, and only reflecting on the changes the development team has made in the past 6 months, and including the tomorrow update,  I feel like you have destroyed the last drop of joy Guild Wars2 brought me.

Not only that the very hard and FUN content of Fractal CMs has been layed to eternal grave by making it literally not worth our time due to the lack of Mystic Coins but our only purpose as warriors in endgame content will now be dismantled. As a warrior our damage and utilities have been super mediocre (nothing any more crazier than good CC effects, NOT best), not being able to even nearly complete with other classes and specialisations.

 

My 3 questions for you are:

- What are you going to do to ensure that the level of effort input will fairly reflect the level of rewards in the future? I like what dev team is doing with the strikes, trying to get people to understand team play and synergetycs, but to make strikes the best source of rewards is doing nothing to improve the casual players willingness to improve further into fractal challenges and raids.

- What other trade-offs will you include to ensure the longevivity of the warrior class in endgame content, after removing its only advantages to include one in your team, synergy wise? At least give us permanent quickness sharing with minimal dps loss. I mean catalyst and scrapper can do 29/30k damage per second while providing permanent quickness to 5 players. The community does not wish to have an unbalanced warrior that does permanent quickness with full diviner gear, outputting 20k damage per second. It simply does not match the other 2 power quickness specs that can provide superspeed or healing and other general buffs and utility that the warrior cannot currently provide. It just doesn't make sense.

- Why are you seriously suggesting that those above FAQs are actually FAQs? I've searched the whole thread, and the original patch post, and not one player asked anything near those lines. To me your post seems like a failed damage control comeback that actually enraged the community even more juding by the comments. I think a more realistic acceptance of the turmoil the balance team created and holding off updates to make things right and listen to the community for once is more appropriate here.

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Bogdanski.4697
Included 1 more question i have originally forgot

[Hawk.2875]

I logged in just so I could post on these forums. After reading over reddit and the forums after the patch preview, this game has the worst online community of any MMORPG I have ever played. I cannot imagine the state of morale in the office is after this insane and ridiculous overreaction. I personally would never want to develop anything for any of you ever again. I'd be looking for a new job. 

[Ruisenior.6342]

Now what we all know is of which side the coin has fallen.

 

This game needs some love.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Ruisenior.6342

[Jokuc.3478]

56 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

I don’t expect that you’ll agree with all of it – especially from the conversation we’ve been monitoring – but we owe you the explanations.

I can already see where this is going.. If we simplify the game too much and homogenize classes I'm out. That's not the kind of game I was excited to play when I decided to try guild wars 2.

[Zoser.7245]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Hey folks - I've been in and out of meetings today, apologies for delay. Here's some responses to questions I've seen repeated a few times:

Q: A balance team was just created after End of Dragons? Why wasn't there a balance team before?

I'd like to clarify my comment. Guild Wars 2 has had a balance team in the past, no doubt. For End of Dragons, our professions designers were asked to turn their full attention towards building elite specializations, which ultimately meant that live balance updates were few and far between. As we were building our dev plans for post-End of Dragons, I felt very strongly that we needed to staff a full-time balance team that supports the live game, even as we're building future expansion content. We're trying to get to a place where we can hit a consistent cadence with the updates, even as other work is in flight.

A dedicated full time balance team is the right decision here.  Balancing the game is somewhat of a periodic task. And a worker trained in it is ideal and will do it quickly and efficiently following a pre-established protocol and methodology and having the right knowledge and even train playing if needed.
It is very easy to see. If you sporadically ask employee who regularly performs a task to act on another he usually dont do, he will probably lose time researching things he forgot and learn the new needed ones. It will not be efficient and it is time and money lost for the company plus, probably, obtain a poor result in the project like the current balance patch.

On the other hand, a worker trained in a task as specific as balancing, where knowledge of skills is required, analytical tools, analyzing problems not only based on numbers but also on player comments/feedback, analyzing mechanics, creating new ones, testing, etc, that requires specialization. That specialized employee will have the knowledge, habit, skill, etc, and do the work much faster in each balancing cycle and he'll probably even have time off to help out with other business/developer tasks that not require specialization after finish his prioritary ones, like helping coding in other areas, etc. So is a win win in that sense. 

Not all business can afford it and need a employee able to do all task in some way. But it's Arenanet...

About the new philosophy... well, scared,  we will see.  I hope that the professions don't lose their mechanical identity , their theme and that the achievements outside CM instanced content are not reduced to simply faceroll on the keyboard to acomplish them.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Zoser.7245

[Serpiente.4510]

50 minutes ago, Elrey.5472 said:

One possible change that would make a lot of people happier and get you guys better feedback: A public test server (for balancing, not story. Let's avoid spoilers). Other MMOs already do it, they have a server where everyone (anyone that wants to create an account there) can test balancing, builds and theorycraft changes and gear min-maxing 1 month ahead of live release.  Those people interested in checking would undoubtely create an account there, while people not interested will just ignore it. But I feel that at least that's a lot better than a private discord with selected people. You would have better feedback and a more stable QA before release.

Please consider it.

Which MMOs do this?

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Thanks Grouch. It's nice to know that there is now a separate balance team from the one working on elite specs (assuming we get them for expac 4).

[Labjax.2465]

53 minutes ago, Elrey.5472 said:

One possible change that would make a lot of people happier and get you guys better feedback: A public test server (for balancing, not story. Let's avoid spoilers). Other MMOs already do it, they have a server where everyone (anyone that wants to create an account there) can test balancing, builds and theorycraft changes and gear min-maxing 1 month ahead of live release.  Those people interested in checking would undoubtely create an account there, while people not interested will just ignore it. But I feel that at least that's a lot better than a private discord with selected people. You would have better feedback and a more stable QA before release.

Please consider it.

Unfortunately, this would only work if they actually listen to the feedback coming from a public test server. Not that long ago, I came from a game where they had expansion changes up on a public test server for... I want to say, a month or two at least, ignored most of the critical feedback (which was near unanimous in people who were posting feedback), pushed the changes out anyway, and their expansion went terribly.

It can work, but they have to take it seriously.

[Ruisenior.6342]

6 minutes ago, Serpiente.4510 said:

Which MMOs do this?

Dunnot of any mmorpg doing this but league of legends moba has a separate client for public testing and feedback

[Melian.5368]

9 minutes ago, Serpiente.4510 said:

Which MMOs do this?

EVE Online comes to my mind that does it. Also I think all MOBAs have it. 

[FrozenPsyche.2134]

i dont like this Balance patch at all specially that a lot of the classes feel like they need to do a big effort to acomplish things and need big trade-offs while we still have some classes that can do everything efortlessly. also the feeling of knowing that the classes i like the most require to play perfectly to do 90% of what others do by pressing 3 buttons feels pretty bad (specially talking about ele).

 

i would love instead of nerfing firebrand, scourge, etc. if there was a way to bring the others up there. But even if the solution is indeed a nerf to the OP classes, thats great too. i trust you guys will get it right! this is an awesome game.

 

thanks for this post and i will read the design thoughts behind the changes when they come out! i'll probably skip playing for this patch and get back into the game during the fall 🙂

[AsWeShiver.1945]

Is playtesting of big patches an option? Has it ever been discussed? Something akin to the elite spec previews we had for the expansions (some might argue they weren't necessarily that effective but prob better than nothing!). Also, what is the point of posting a patch preview if there is no opportunity to act on the less vitriolic feedback. I mean, it definitely generated hype of a sort...

 

Its hard to imagine what kind of context would explain some of these changes. The intention, for the most part, seems OK. I think its the implementation that needs some explanation.

 

Perhaps the silver lining is that if people really had no expecations, then the response wouldn't have been so... explosive. I had high hopes for this patch given the mostly positive noises that have been coming from ANET of late. I'm not gonna throw my toys out the pram and quit, but it is pretty disappointing to see these changes and it definitely dampens my enthusiasm for the game.

 

I think one thing that I've kept hearing that I couldn't agree more with is how final GW2 patches feel. Changes are made and then they tend to stick around for much too long/forever. I guess there is a balance to be struck between being too reactive (I think the early Catalyst changes are perhaps an example of that) and not nearly reactive enough.

 

I don't normally bother with forum posts, but I found a lot of the toxic stuff to be really pretty awful. People taking certain private conversations way out of context and honestly just wallowing in their own rage. I just wanted to add a voice of criticism that isn't just pure malice. So, the patch sucks, there needs to be some sort of internal debrief on this whole debacle and then I think there needs to be some strategy for how player feedback is gathered - perhaps specifically for the implementation of changes, not just the broad strokes.

 

Good Luck! 🙂

[Blade.6549]

I am sorry, but I will not play this game anymore until the game is properly balanced.

Goodbye.